Co-authored letter to the APA to take a lead role in the recognition of teaching in the classroom, based on the participation in an interdisciplinary Conference on the Role of Advocacy in the Classroom back in 1995. At the time of this writing, the late Myles Brand was the President of Indiana University and a member of the IU Department of Philosophy.

Cancers rely on multiple, heterogeneous processes at different scales, pertaining to many biomedical fields. Therefore, understanding cancer is necessarily an interdisciplinary task that requires placing specialised experimental and clinical research into a broader conceptual, theoretical, and methodological framework. Without such a framework, oncology will collect piecemeal results, with scant dialogue between the different scientific communities studying cancer. We argue that one important way forward in service of a more successful dialogue is through greater integration of applied sciences (experimental and clinical) (...) with conceptual and theoretical approaches, informed by philosophical methods. By way of illustration, we explore six central themes: (i) the role of mutations in cancer; (ii) the clonal evolution of cancer cells; (iii) the relationship between cancer and multicellularity; (iv) the tumour microenvironment; (v) the immune system; and (vi) stem cells. In each case, we examine open questions in the scientific literature through a philosophical methodology and show the benefit of such a synergy for the scientific and medical understanding of cancer. (shrink)

Sources of difficulty in insight problem-solving have been identified, but current theories are less successful at explaining discovery of solution ideas. Here, we explore the role of expertise in promoting insight. In Experiment 1, experienced designers and financiers solved visual and verbal problems. Expertise did not influence solution rates for verbal problems, but designers solved more visual problems than financiers, despite similar incorrect initial attempts. In Experiment 2, experienced and novice designers attempted problems either unconstrained, prevented from drawing, or sitting (...) on their hands to prevent drawing and gesture. Hand and drawing constraints removed the positive benefits of expertise. Experienced designers appear to solve visual problems by using strategies to explore the visuo-spatial environment in search of new representations. The results indicate that expert strategic knowledge can be a source of insight. They also show that strategic transfer of expertise to far domains can be achieved. (shrink)

As engineering applications require management of ever larger volumes of data, ontologies offer the potential to capture, manage, and augment data with the capability for automated reasoning and semantic querying. Unfortunately, considerable barriers hinder wider deployment of ontologies in engineering. Key among these is lack of a shared top-level ontology to unify and organise disparate aspects of the field and coordinate co-development of orthogonal ontologies. As a result, many engineering ontologies are limited to their scope, and functionally difficult to extend (...) or interoperate with other engineering ontologies. This paper demonstrates how the use of a top-level ontology, specifically the Basic Formal Ontology (BFO), greatly facilitates interoperability of multiple engineering-related ontologies. We constructed a system of formal linked ontologies by re-engineering legacy ontologies to be conformant with BFO and developing new BFO-conformant ontologies to capture knowledge in the engineering design, enterprise, human factors, manufacturing, and application domain of additive manufacturing. The resulting Integrated Framework for Additively Manufactured Products (IFAMP), including the body knowledge instantiated on its basis, serve as the basis for a proposed Design with Additive Manufacturing Method (DWAM), which we believe can support the design of innovative products with semantically enhanced ideation tools and enhanced access to application domain knowledge. The method and its facilitation through the ontological framework are demonstrated using a case study in medicine. (shrink)

The paper demonstrates that dependency-based syntax is in a strong position to produce principled and economical accounts of the syntax of constructs. The difficulty that constituency-based syntax has in this regard is that very many constructs fail to qualify as constituents. The point is evident with the box diagrams and attribute value matrices (AVMs) that some construction grammars (CxGs) use to formalize constructions; these schemata often represent fragments rather than constituents. In dependency-based syntax in contrast, constructions are catenae, whereby a (...) catena is a chain of words linked together by dependencies. The catena is a novel but well-defined unit of syntax associated with dependency grammar (DG). The constructs of CxGs are more amenable to analyses in terms of the catenae of dependency-based syntax than to analyses in terms of the constituents of constituency-based syntax. (shrink)

Das Konzept der Abwägung wird in der praktischen Philosophie ebenso ubiquitär verwendet wie in den Wirtschaftswissenschaften und im Recht. Es ist jedoch voraussetzungsvoller und umstrittener als zumeist angenommen. „Abwägung“ bezeichnet einen Vorgang praktischen Überlegens, in den mehrere Aspekte in vergleichender Weise eingehen. Die Skepsis gegen das Konzept gründet darin, dass sich die Metapher nicht auf beliebige Gegenstände anwenden lässt. Insbesondere müssen die Wertzuschreibungen, die das Gewicht der Gegenstände bestimmen, in ihren normativen Grundlagen widerspruchsfrei sein und sie müssen ähnlich wie die (...) Gewichtskräfte, mit denen Körper auf die Schalen einer Balkenwaage einwirken, eine gewisse Kontextinvarianz aufweisen. Das setzt Unabhängigkeitsannahmen voraus, deren Gültigkeit im Falle normativer Bewertungen nicht trivial ist. Der Band dient dem Zweck, diese Zusammenhänge durchsichtiger zu machen. Er entstand auf der Basis einer mehrjährigen Zusammenarbeit von Autor:innen aus den Fächern Philosophie, Jurisprudenz und Ökonomie. (shrink)

The ArgumentConflicts between scientists over credit for their discoveries are conflicts, not merely in, but of science because discovery is not a historical event, but a retrospective social judgment. There is no objective moment of discovery; rather, discovery is established by means of a hermeneutics, a way of reading scientific articles. The priority conflict between Roger Guillemin and Andrew Schally over the discovery of the brain hormone, TRF, serves as an example. The work of Robert Merton, Thomas Kuhn, Augustine (...) Brannigan, and Grygory Markus shows that scientists read scientific articles by means of the application of a set of pragmatic rules that subtend the normative requirements of what counts as a scientific discovery. In other words, there is a hermeneutics of science, but it is internal to that form of life. Recategorization of priority conflicts has an impact on our view of scientific controversy generally. The impact is the revision of the boundary lines of scientific controversy and the further specification of its fine-structure. (shrink)

Princess Diana’s death was a tragedy that provoked mourning across the globe; the death of a homeless person, more often than not, is met with apathy. How can we account for this uneven distribution of emotion? Can it simply be explained by the prevailing scientific understanding? Uncovering a rich tradition beginning with Aristotle, _The Secret History of Emotion_ offers a counterpoint to the way we generally understand emotions today. Through a radical rereading of Aristotle, Seneca, Thomas Hobbes, Sarah Fielding, (...) and Judith Butler, among others, Daniel M. Gross reveals a persistent intellectual current that considers emotions as psychosocial phenomena. In Gross’s historical analysis of emotion, Aristotle and Hobbes’s rhetoric show that our passions do not stem from some inherent, universal nature of men and women, but rather are conditioned by power relations and social hierarchies. He follows up with consideration of how political passions are distributed to some people but not to others using the Roman Stoics as a guide. Hume and contemporary theorists like Judith Butler, meanwhile, explain to us how psyches are shaped by power. To supplement his argument, Gross also provides a history and critique of the dominant modern view of emotions, expressed in Darwinism and neurobiology, in which they are considered organic, personal feelings independent of social circumstances. The result is a convincing work that rescues the study of the passions from science and returns it to the humanities and the art of rhetoric. (shrink)

Alva Noë, who is a major figure in establishment philosophy, has been producing work that speaks directly to rhetoric in new ways that are important. This "In Focus" project explores how so, with the help of Carrie Noland on dance, Thomas Rickert on music, and, in a previous issue of Philosophy & Rhetoric 53.1, Nancy Struever on the basics of human inquiry including pictorial, which she thinks almost nobody gets right except for R. G. Collingwood, and perhaps now Noë. (...) In each case you will see how "rhetoric" must be stretched by way of these lateral artistic, and at the same time essential, projects in the discipline per se."Rhetoric" in these considerations is certainly not a vague notion that the things we do... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 34.4 (2001) 308-321 [Access article in PDF] Early Modern Emotion and the Economy of Scarcity 1 - [PDF] Daniel M. Gross Where do we get the idea that emotion is kind of excess, something housed in our nature aching for expression? In part, I argue, from The Passions of the Soul (1649), wherein Descartes proposed the reductive psychophysiology of emotion that informs both romantic expressivism (...) and latter-day psychology. Indeed, one goal of this article is simply to recall that we do not just naturally express emotions generated in our amygdala or wherever, but rather that we are first constituted as expressive agents by what the philosophers of the Scottish Enlightenment called "social passions." Contrary, however, to these largely optimistic philosophers, such as Hutcheson and Smith, who anchored social passions in a moral sense equally shared by all, I argue that the constitutive power of emotion derives from their unequal distribution. In what follows I work primarily with Aristotle's Rhetoric and Thomas Hobbes to outline a "political economy" wherein passions are (1) constituted as differences in power and (2) conditioned not by their excess but by their scarcity. Though we may reject the political conclusions reached by Aristotle and Hobbes, their analysis of emotion allows us to address important political questions neutralized in the Cartesian paradigm. 1. Descartes If you are tickled to learn that Aztec culture located passions in the liver, here is something at least as quaint from Descartes: "The ultimate and most proximate cause of the passions of the soul is none other than the agitation with which the spirits move the little gland which is in the middle of the [End Page 308] brain," that is, the pineal gland. Or so Descartes proposes in his 1649 treatise on the passions composed for Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia. Now compare this to Aristotle's Rhetoric, where for instance anger is defined as "desire, accompanied by distress, for conspicuous retaliation because of a conspicuous slight that was directed, without justification, against oneself or those near to one" (1378a 31-33). For Aristotle anger may indeed be accompanied by physical distress, as in the boiling of blood expressed in crimson cheeks, but its proximate cause is anything but that little gland in the middle of the head. Anger is a deeply social passion provoked by perceived slightsunjustified, and it presupposes a public stage where social status is always subject to performative infelicities.Indeed, we can learn a good deal about the rhetoric of human nature in early-modern Europe simply by asking what passions were. When we do, we find not only that their descriptions disagree, but also that the things described as passions seem incommensurable. Are passions tangible "things" residing in the soul, or are they dispositions of the heart or beliefs of the mind? Is passion a matter of personal expression, or is it something essentially social that a person performs? Do they come from our interior, or from the things we perceive? Can they be measured and manipulated--their causes controlled--or do passions elude control by their very nature? Are they divine, diabolical, or human, and can we distinguish them according to the status of their origin? Are they the enabling condition of virtue or its enemy? Are they necessary or disposable? What is their number and what do they do? Exasperated by endless wrangling over such questions, Descartes complains: There is nothing in which the defective nature of the sciences which we have received from the ancients appears more clearly than in what they have written on the passions; for although this is a matter which has at all times been the object of much investigation, and though it would not appear to be one of the most difficult, inasmuch as since everyone has experience of the passions within himself, there is no necessity to borrow one's observations from elsewhere in order to discover their nature. (331) 2With this preliminary remark Descartes renders human nature in its quintessential modern form: it is something housed in a body subject to the self-evidence... (shrink)

This essay ist based on Heinrich Rombach's conception of structural phenomenology, a conception not yet widely known in philosophy and not at all known in sociology. The implications for the social sciences of this conception are explicated, related to the well-known positions of Max Weber, Alfred Schütz, Thomas S. Kuhn, and then linked to the current methodological discussion in the field of sociology in West Germany. The resulting promising new possibilities for basic questions of theory construction in the social (...) sciences, but especially in sociology, are detailed and clarified with respect to the possibility and necessity of the various movements and conceptions of plurality, perspectivity and consciousness of cognition levels. (shrink)

Traite de la conception philosophique de Jacques Maritain qui a développé tout au long de sa carrière un système de pensée proche de celui de Saint Thomas d'Aquin. Cette étude s'inscrit dans la tentative de mettre en lumière les aspects fondamentaux de la quête de l'homme et de son rapport à la beauté d'après le philosophe Maritain.

In this presentation we shall discuss the nature of mind vis-a-vis the brain and computers. Such a comparison presumes a general equivalence of brains and computers and models the brain as a huge biological computer, with consciousness added. The uniqueness of Mind in the lines of ancient Indian thought has been accpted as the basic concept in the analysis. Regarding the chief difference between mind and brain, material of the mind is taken to be subtle matter.The brain is made of (...) gross matter and is a part of the physical body. Considering the brain and the computer, the brain is a biological structure made of organic molecules, whereas computer chips are inorganic objects manufactured by etching circuits on the surface of silica chips. Thus the human brain, occupying volume, is a volumetric entity whereas a computer, as electronic circuitry on a silica chip, is an areal entity. This explains the vast processing power andexceptional capabilities of the human brain. (shrink)

Reappraisal plays a central role in theoretical models of emotion regulation (ER) (e.g. Gross, 2015), and is often regarded as a prominent example of a functional ER strategy. This is supported by...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Rhetoric in History as Theory and Praxis: A Blast from the PastThomas B. FarrellPhilosophies of history have fallen on hard times. Grand comic metanarratives were the first casualty, auguring ironically in the futility of their own pronouncements. Positive and negative teleologies were next to fall. But if finalized themes and Utopian schemes are not exactly in vogue, it remains the case that history—as systematic documentation and reminiscence about the (...) past—is and must be ongoing. This is transparently because things that matter continue to happen: with ideas, cultures, nature itself. And even if we never really learn from history, all other things being equal, history has shown that it is helpful to keep careful records. In an age that personalizes nearly everything, it is easy enough to recognize the familiar dissociation of act and accountability on a personal scale. What may appear as nothing more serious than petty truancy for a person may become amnesia, revisionism, and much worse when the zone of accountability is widened, the deeds are deepened, the stakes are increased. In each case, the argument is the same: identification through a sort of opaque empathy. In short, you had to be there.I intend this essay to be a meditation on some of the ways my amorphousarea of study, rhetorical theory, finds itself implicated with history, some possible avenues it may open for invention and judgment in history. Time permitting, I will also hazard a speculation on that great chimera [End Page 323] that dangles before fields of scholarship and historical projects alike: that of progress.Aristotle’s famous definition of rhetoric, “that its function is not to persuade but to see the available means of persuasion in each case” (1991, 35), begins my inquiry in a productively ambiguous way. For one thing, the definition locates the function of rhetoric directly within the sphere of human history, through the terms available and in each case. For unless we believe that means of persuasion are fixed and that cases are eternally recurring, what the rhetorician “sees” must vary with the times. A second note maybe in order here. For Aristotle’s term for seeing, theoresai, also happens to be the Greek root term for what we call “theory.” In its most fundamental sense, then, the ocular-centered aesthetic of Greek tradition gives us theory as a mode of “seeing.” I could add at this point that this “seeing” needs to be shared with others and that there are many ways of “seeing,” but this maybe a less-than-productive ambiguity, given my aims here.Instead, I wish to consider three distinct construals of what sort of practice rhetoric is, along with some implications of these construals for the place of rhetoric as theory and practice in human history. These three construals are rhetoric as productive art, rhetoric as constitutive art, and rhetoricas inventional art.We begin with the conception of rhetoric as productive art. Simply put, this means that rhetoric makes things, prototypically speeches. Such a conception, like the other two I will be discussing, has ebbed and flowed throughout the long history of rhetorical tradition. The Sophists, when not purporting to teach virtue, did profess their competence in instructing other show to create persuasive documents. Such a preoccupation also appears in rhetorics of belles lettres and elocution. Today it can be found in modern composition curricula and in the rather different world of the professional speechwriter.There have been very few attempts to link an exclusively productive art conception of rhetoric to Aristotle and still fewer successful attempts. To view the matter this way, one would need to think of the Rhetoric and the Poetics as essentially parallel documents (one makes poems; the other, speeches). One would also have to ignore a wealth of disconfirming evidence. Nonetheless, Alan G. Gross is able to write (in the aptly titled collection Rereading Aristotle’s “Rhetoric”), “‘What did Aristotle mean by rhetoric?’ At this juncture, I can do little more than reiterate my claim that rhetoric is a productive art, and only a productive art” (2000, 35). George Kennedy, the translator of our earlier passage, sees the matter rather differently: “What [End Page 324] kind of... (shrink)

Current debate over the motives, ideological justifications, and outcomes of the war with Iraq have been strident and polarizing. _A Matter of Principle _is the first volume gathering critical voices from around the world to offer an alternative perspective on the prevailing pro-war and anti-war positions. The contribu-tors—political figures, public intellectuals, scholars, church leaders, and activists—represent the most powerful views of liberal internationalism. Offering alternative positions that challenge the status quo of both the left and the right, these essays claim (...) that, in spite of the inconsistent justifications provided by the United States and its allies and the conflict-ridden process of social reconstruction, the war in Iraq has been morally justifiable on the grounds that Saddam Hussein was a brutal tyrant, a flagrant violator of human rights, a force of global instability and terror, and a threat to world peace. The authors discuss the limitations of the current system of global governance, which tolerates gross violations of human rights and which has failed to prevent genocide in places such as Bosnia and Rwanda. They also underscore the need for reform in international institutions and international law. At the same time, these essays do not necessarily attempt to apologize for the mistakes, errors, and deceptions in the way the Bush administration has handled the war. Disputing the idea that the only true liberal position on the war is to be against it, this volume charts an invaluable third course, a path determined by a strong liberal commitment to human rights, solidarity with the oppressed, and a firm stand against fascism, totalitarianism, and tyranny. (shrink)

p. 13: But if Mayr himself was an unconscious 'physicalist', why did he argue so forcefully against the machine theory of life? In part his dissatisfaction with this approach can be explained as a residue of earlier experiences. When he started to argue for the autonomy of biology in the early 1960s, the unique, emergent characteristics of organisms were ignored by the philosophy of science which was dominated by physics (Greene 1994; Hull 1994). In this situation Mayr not only criticised (...) this particular neglect as reductionism, but questioned the usefulness of the physicalist approach for biology in general. In recent decades this situation has clearly changed and this was also due to Mayr's relentless fight for the recognition of the unique aspects of biology. Nevertheless he stuck to his broad rejection and ignored developments toward a more sophisticated view (cf. Emmeche, Koppe and Stjernfelt 1997). But there is probably more to it. His second motivation is an emotional aversion against connotations and implications of the word 'machine'. The view that organisms-including humans!-are 'survival machines', 'robot vehicles' programmed to preserve their genes conveys a deterministic and mechanistic view that is perceived by many persons as a gross 'narcissistic insult' (Freud 1917, pp. 6, 7). It is a view that Mayr definitely did not appreciate. (shrink)

Johann Gottlieb Fichtes Wissenschaftslehre von 1812 stellt die letzte umfassende Ausarbeitung der Grundlegung der Fichteschen Transzendentalphilosophie dar. Historisch handelt es sich um die 'Endgestalt' eines Projekts, das in Zürich und Jena knapp zwanzig Jahre zuvor begonnen worden war, systematisch um den wichtigsten Anwärter auf den Titel der 'Vollendungsgestalt' einer Philosophie, mit der Fichte eine ebenbürtige Alternative zu den Systemen Schellings und Hegels vorlegt. Die Autoren des vorliegenden Bandes tragen dem End- und Vollendungscharakter der 'Wissenschaftslehre' in ihrer Version aus dem Jahre (...) 1812 Rechnung. Dafür knüpfen sie etwa bei der neuen Nähe zu Kant an oder buchstabieren den transzendentallogisch so faszinierenden Versuch Fichtes durch, die Erscheinung als absoluten Ort des Wissens zu denken. Auch das Bild als das grosse Leitthema der Fichteschen Spätphilosophie wird verhandelt, während zugleich ältere Motive wie das 'Selbstbewusstsein' oder die 'Reflexion' in ein neues Licht gerückt werden. (shrink)

This article ventures a framework for assessing the contributions capitalism might make to the common good. Capitalism has manifest strengths--efficiency, growth, support for human freedoms, encouragement for collaboration among nations that are not natural allies. Processes that generate these goods have negative consequences as well--the exploitation of labor, environmental harm, the marginalization of the "least advantaged," the reduction of politics to strategies for advancing special interests. To constrain the negative consequences, public oversight is necessary. The challenge is to devise policies (...) that will limit the harms while protecting conditions that enable free markets to flourish. The paper concludes with an illustrative sketch of policy proposals that exemplify this goal. (shrink)

Determining the knowledge that guides human judgments is fundamental to understanding how people reason, make decisions, and form predictions. We use an experimental procedure called ‘‘iterated learning,’’ in which the responses that people give on one trial are used to generate the data they see on the next, to pinpoint the knowledge that informs people's predictions about everyday events (e.g., predicting the total box office gross of a movie from its current take). In particular, we use this method to (...) discriminate between two models of human judgments: a simple Bayesian model (Griffiths & Tenenbaum, 2006) and a recently proposed alternative model that assumes people store only a few instances of each type of event in memory (MinK; Mozer, Pashler, & Homaei, 2008). Although testing these models using standard experimental procedures is difficult due to differences in the number of free parameters and the need to make assumptions about the knowledge of individual learners, we show that the two models make very different predictions about the outcome of iterated learning. The results of an experiment using this methodology provide a rich picture of how much people know about the distributions of everyday quantities, and they are inconsistent with the predictions of the MinK model. The results suggest that accurate predictions about everyday events reflect relatively sophisticated knowledge on the part of individuals. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:102 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY historical circumstances a suprahistorical, eternal significance, and that a historian or interpreter of a philosophy will do it justice only if he grasps this lasting truth and content, in addition to comparing it with the opinions of other earlier or later thinkers. One cannot see how a thinker who considered Plato as valid while treating him and others historically could have arrived at a different (...) conclusion. But it is a position admirably expressed that would deserve greater attention and a wider following among the present practitioners of the history of philosophy. Hoffmann's method and style in this, as in most of his other writings, deserve the highest praise, for he combines simplicity with density. His manner of expression reflects his commitment to truth (a commitment curiously omitted by many contemporary existentialists), and the integrity of his character: Hoffmann was one of the few German scholars who made no concessions to Nazism because he was a faithful representative of that German tradition which was incompatible with Nazism: classical humanism in its scholarly, literary and educational meaning, philosophical idealism, and liberal protestantism. Guided by Plato, Kant and Goethe, Hoffmann was untouched by the Romantic and nationalistic strands of German thought. His work transmits to us the precious heritage of a life completely devoted to philosophy and to scholarship, and of an important period in the history of German thought. He omits many things which we have learned in the last few years, or which we may still learn through future studies. Yet he can teach us many important things that are too easily forgotten in our present discussions: the role of Platonism in the history of philosophy and of the sciences, and the fundamental impact of ancient philosophy upon early Christian, medieval and modern thought. It is a heritage which we should try to enlarge, if we can, but also strive to preserve, and to keep alive. PAUL OSKARKRISTELLER Columbia University Studies in Epicurus and Aristotle. By Philip Merlan. (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz [Klassisch-Philologische Studien, Heft 22], 1960. Pp. viii + 112. P1. 4. DM 12.--) Ever since the publication in 1936 of Bignone's L'Aristotele perduto e la formazione filosofica di Epicuro there have been attempts to define the exact nature of the debt which Epicurus owes to the Peripatos. In this collection of essays, the author of From Platonism to Neoplatonism turns his keen powers of analysis upon a number of specific problems deriving from Plato's Laws and carrying us via Aristotle's Metaphysics and Ethics to Epicurus's theology and beyond. In the first chapter, "Hedone in Epicurus and Aristotle," the author takes us on a generous stroll through hedonist materials, BOOK REVIEWS 103 including an ode by Schiller, to explore the precise meaning of the term hedone. More especially he is concerned to show how close the Epicurean understanding of the term is to that of Aristotle in at least some of his writings, notably Protrepticus and Nic. Eth. H and Met. A. The results of this investigation may be stated in the author's own words: Whether it occurs in Epicurus or in Aristotle, the term hedone can mean anything between gross sensual "pleasure" and entirely spiritual "joy." And on the whole it seems preferable to speak of the philosophy of Epicurus as a philosophy of joy rather than of pleasure. As far as Aristotle is concerned, it seems more appropriate to say that his Changeless Changer (or Changeless Changers) live a life that is filled with joy rather than pleasure, and that his hedonism is ultimately rooted in that of Eudoxus. Chapter 2, "How Many Kinds of Divinities Did Epicurus Recognize?," argues from the theory of the existence of indiscernible non-identicals (Cicero,4cademica 2.17.55; Philodemus De Pietate col. 80 = fr. 40 Us.) and from the theory of "isonomia," i.e., the balancing of one class of things by an equally large class of a different or opposite character (cf. C. Bailey, Greek Atomists, p. 461 ff.) that the Epicureans recognized two types of worshippables, as is indeed suggested by schol. Diog. Laert. 10.139: (I) the popular traditional divinities who are kar arithmon, i.e., severally unique, and... (shrink)

Malignant tumours are often characterised by significant rearrangement of the genome. This may be visible in the form of a deranged karyotype with both loss and gain of DNA sequences extending from chromosomal regions to whole chromosomes. In several tumour types, however, gross genomic derangements are minimal, and tumour cells contain one or more additional (supernumerary) chromosomes that may be unrecognisable in terms of a single origin. In this review we term such chromosomes cancer‐associated neochromosomes (CaNCs). In the absence (...) of other identified genomic abnormalities, and because the CaNC is a common feature of the cancer type, it is hypothesised that the genetic alterations required for cell transformation are contained within its structure. In this review, we discuss the potential impact of modern genomic technologies on our understanding of the nature and causes of CaNC formation, which is central to several cancer types, exemplified here by well‐differentiated liposarcoma. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:THOMAS, THOMISMS, AND TRUTH BRUCE D. MARSHALL Saint Olaf College Northfield, Minnesota I HE GREAT, as Hegel's dictum has it, condemn the rest f us to the task of understanding them. We take our evenge upon the great, especialy upon great thinkers, by enlisting them for our own purposes, as our supporters and defenders in conflicts perhaps quite different from those in which they themselves were engaged. (...) class='Hi'>Thomas Aquinas was a master, virtually without peer, at the intellectual enlistment of the great, and he himself has been perhaps as widely and variously recruited as any of those to whom he devoted his own attentions. When we enlist Thomas for our own purposes with some consistency and success, the result is a " Thomism," of which there have been many, sometimes quite conflicting varieties. My article " Aquinas as Postliberal Theologian " does not propose anything so developed as a Thomism, but perhaps at most a fragment of one.1 In their responses to it, Frederick J. Crosson and Louis 1 The Thomist 53 (1989) : 353-402. The interpretation of Thomas proposed there bears a family resemblance to that of some recent Thomisms and so is not wholly without precedent. Cf. Michel Corbin, Le chemin de la theologie chez Thomas D'Aquin (Paris: Beauchesne, 1974); Otto Herman Pesch, Die Theologie der Rechtfertigung bei Martin Luther und Thomas von Aquin (Mainz: Matthias-Grunewald-Verlag, 1967) ; idem, Thomas von Aquin: Grenze und Grosse mittelalterlichen Theologie, 2nd ed. (Mainz: MatthiasGrunewald -Verlag, 1989); Gerhard Ludwig Muller, "Hebt das Sola-FidePrinzip die Moglichkeit einer naturlichen Theologie auf? Eine Ruckfrage bei Thomas von Aquin," Catholica 40 (1986) : 59-96; Victor Preller, Divine Science and the Science of God (Princeton: University Press, 1967). Reference to these Thomisms should not, of course, be taken to constitute agreement with any particular claim one of them may make. 499 500 BRUCE D. MARSHALL Roy, O.P., argue that as a piece of Thomism-as the enlistment of Thomas in defense and support of a particular contemporary view of truth, meaning, and epistemic justification-it is at best unpromising. In so doing, they indicate, at least in part, what views on these matters they think Thomas can plausibly be enlisted to support, that is, the sort of Thomism they find more convincing. Great thinkers are not, however, defenseless against our efforts to recruit them for our ends. Especially in the case of one whose thought is as ramified, precise, and historically distant as is that of Thomas Aquinas, these efforts are likely to meet with some resistance. (Indeed, we will be inclined to distrust them if they claim not to.) We may even find ourselves compelled to refashion our own ends in order not to forgo plausible appeal to his precedent and support. Sometimes different Thomisms will no doubt include purposes distant enough from Thomas's own (as best we can grasp them) that it may be impossible to adjudicate conflicts between them by appeal to his texts. But in many cases it ought to be possible to decide reasonably between competing Thomisms (that is, to decide which more plausibly enlists Thomas for its own purposes) by assessing the amount and type of resistance each meets from the text of Thomas (of course this includes the possibility that competition between Thomisms reflects unresolved conflict within Thomas's own thought). In the present case the prospect of reasonable adjudication seems much increased by the fact that the large issues with which it is concerned -truth, meaning, and justification-tend to coalesce around what seems to be a straightforward matter of fact: whether Thomas taught that persons without Christian faith, and especially pre-Christian philosophers, knew, or were even able to know, God. Crosson and Roy both argue that the implausibility of my interpretation of Aquinas on these larger issues-the linking of a comprehensively coherentist account of justification an~ a contextualist account of meaning to Thomas's correspondence notion of truth-is especially clear in its attribution to Thomas of a posi- THOMA$, THOMISMS, AND TRUTH 501 tion he manifestly rejects: that a pre-Christian philosopher like Aristotle did not, and indeed could not, know God. This seems obvious to most modern Thomisms, which, however... (shrink)

The Christian Tradition has Consistently claimed that, somehow, God may be identified with the truth as such. The claim has a fine biblical pedigree: John’s gospel asserts that Christ, and therefore God, is truth (John 14:6, 16:13). It is prominent in the early church fathers, especially Augustine; and the medievals, including Anselm, largely followed his lead. Nor is the claim confined to the pre-Reformation era. It is also found in the Reformed Church’s Westminster Confession, for example.1 Despite its pedigree, the (...) claim that God is truth strikes modern sensibilities as bizarre, a gross category mistake. For example, many contemporary philosophers treat truth as a property of statements or .. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 23 (2003) 21-32 [Access article in PDF] Re-Creating Christian Community:A Response to Rita M. Gross Donald W. Mitchell Purdue University In Rita M. Gross's well-written, insightful, and provocative paper entitled "Some Reflections about Community and Survival," Rita says: "I am challenging my Christian colleagues to consider what role Western religious concepts about the individual may have played in getting us into the current hyper-individualism. I (...) also am asking whether the Buddhist concept of interdependence might be very useful in providing tools with which to think about why this hyper-individualism cannot survive."In terms of Rita's challenge, one could make the generalization that the notion of the individual soul being saved or on a journey to union with God has certainly played an important role in Christianity. At the extreme in this regard, Thomas à Kempis even advised solitude and the actual avoidance of other people, seen by him to be distractions to the spiritual life. However, most Christians would see this advice as an unhealthy extreme, agreeing with Rita that solitude has a "valued role...in the context of social life, not a substitute for it" (11). It is much more common for Christians to see themselves as parts of the mystical body of Christ, and to believe that their authentic selfhood and discipleship are found in the context of fellowship and community life in the church.In what follows here, I will try to show how the notions of selfhood and discipleship are being defined in a particular re-creation of Christian community, which includes persons of other faiths. I have been asked to make my response from the perspective of my own Christian community, the Focolare, which focuses on the kinds of social, economic, and environmental issues that we have been discussing for the past three years. In so doing, I will also try to show how the Focolare's trinitarian vision of God, community, and the cosmos is a possible answer to the above-quoted question Rita asks about how interdependence might be an antidote to hyper-individualism. Along the way, I will raise issues that relate to other points Rita makes in her paper, and then address her conclusions at the end of my paper. Seeds of a New Christian Community The Focolare began duringWorld War II with a small group of young women, whose ages ranged from fifteen to twenty-five, living in the city of Trent, Italy. 1 At the center [End Page 21] of the group was Chiara Lubich, who was only twenty-three at the time. In May of 1944 Lubich's home was destroyed by bombs, and her family decided to leave the city. Lubich made the difficult decision to remain with her companions in Trent, where they would meet in the bomb shelters as often as eleven times each day. They would take with them to the shelters only the Bible, which they searched for guidance in that difficult situation. What they came to understand in those hours together and then put into practice became the basis for re-creating a Christian community, one that is sensitive to the social, political, and economic conditions that had produced the war in which they were caught.A foundational discovery for these young women was a collective and yet very personal experience, in the midst of the death and destruction of the war, that "God is Love" (I John 4:8). Their contemplation of the First Letter of John, as well as other parts of the Scripture, strengthened not only their belief in the existence of God, when many were doubting God's existence, but also their faith in the love of God for each one of them.Wanting to respond to this experience of God's love, they again found in Scripture that God does not seek just a response of individual prayerful sentiment or personal piety, but a response that includes doing God's will: "It is not those who say to me, 'Lord, Lord,' who will enter the kingdom of heaven... (shrink)

This paper is a response to Keith Lehrer's ‘Reid on Common Sense and Morals.’ I start by defending the general claim that it is appropriate to call Reid a moral realist. I continue by discussing three aspects of Reid's account of moral ideas. First, our first moral conceptions are non-propositional mental states that are essential ingredients of moral perception. Our first moral conceptions are not gross, indistinct and egocentric but are uninformed mental states that might be about others. Second, (...) moral perception functions like perception of aesthetic properties and of the mental states of other humans, and this kind of perception is both immediate and informed. Third, I discuss the role of moral feelings in moral motivation. (shrink)

The Heythrop Journal, EarlyView. -/- For the longest time, it has been generally held and widely acknowledged that Thomas Aquinas thought homosexual activity to be morally wrong. In recent years, this common interpretation has come under challenge by none other than the President of the Leonine Commission, the Dominican Adriano Oliva. In a recent book, Loves: The Church, the Remarried Divorced, and Homosexual Couples (in French Amours: L’Église, les divorcés remariés, les couples homosexuels), Oliva argues that Thomas Aquinas (...) would have supported homosexual practices for homosexual persons, or at least that an accurate application of Thomistic principles entails that homosexual acts are morally good. Is this just wishful thinking on Oliva’s part or does his argument have some merit? In order to answer that question, I will proceed in three parts: first, I will reveal numerous texts Oliva failed to take into account; second, I will explicate Oliva’s hermeneutic and the principal textual support he gives for his position; third, I will examine whether Aquinas would have changed his views on the morality of homosexual activity in light of modern advances in our understanding of the etiology and unchangeability of homosexuality. It is concluded that Oliva's view is a gross misinterpretation of the texts. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS The Logic of God Incarnate. By THOMAS V. MORRIS. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986. Pp. 220. $19.95. Thomas V. Morris, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, has written a technical yet provocative study on the Incarnation. As a faithful Christian he believes in and desires to defend the traditional Christian doctrine of the Incarnation proclaimed in the New Testament and defined (...) by the early councils of the Church, especially Chalcedon, that is, that Jesus is the One eternal Son existing in two natures. He also holds that, while the truth of the Incarnation is revealed, it must nonetheless stand the test of logic and reason. The Incarnation cannot be illogicaJ or meaningless. " If the church has been guided by God in such matters as the formulation of its creeds, conciliar decrees, and catechisms,.... we would not expect glaring logical flaws in its central doctrinal affirmations" (p. 46). The stated purpose of Morris's study is to defend the traditional doctrine against those who would hold it to be logically incoherent and meaningless. "In the course of thinking about the Incarnation for some years now, I have come to see that a few simple metaphysical distinctions and a solid dose of logical care will suffice to explicate and defend the doctrine against all extant criticisms of a philosophical nature" (p. 9). Morris meticulously analyzes and critiques a number of arguments that oppose the possibility of coherence of the Incarnation by attempting to demonstrate that such arguments are.either false and illogical themselves, or that they do not apply to a true understanding of the Incarnation. Moreover, Morris proposes a novel understanding of the Incarnation which he believes is both logical and intelligible, and which conforms to the Christian tradition. This goal of upholding the intelligibility of the Incarnate leads Morris to a three-fold task. He first of all must refute his chief adversaries, those who would deny the sensibleness of saying God became man in Jesus. Such critics deny the validity of the Incarnation on the ground..'! that it is meaning·less, and the'l'efore impossible to juxtapose the incommensurable. attributes of divinity and humanity, e.g., perfection/imperfection, immutability/corruptibility. They hold that Jesus could not have had both these sets of properties at once (cf. p. 20). Morris refuses to capitulate to such arguments. He nevertheless insists that any solution to the issue which would undermine human logic or which would fail to uphold the Christian's belief is no solution at all (cf. p. 32). 367 368 BOOK REVIEWS Secondly, Morris's task leads him to refute any attempts at a " OneNature " solution, which would "squash" together the human and divine natures in Jesus to form a single nature. Such proposals jeopardize either the integrity of Jesus's divinity (Arianism) or his humanity (Docetism, Monophysitism), inevitably composing a mythical tertium quid (cf. pp. 33-38). Morris presents a clear case against such corruptions of the Incarnation. Thirdly, Morris's task brings him to analyze contemporary kenotic Christology. He thoroughly discusses this approach, for the reason that it is directly involved in the issue at hand, namely, the incompatibility between divine and human properties in Christ. Secondarily, however, Morris's interest in kenoticism reflects his own hope that some variation of the approach might posibly arrive at a Christological solution (cf. p. 92). While he ultimately rejects kenoticism, Morris flirts with the various alternatives, and, as we shall see, his own perception of the Incarnation remains tinged with a kenotic flavor. How then is it possible to predicate of one and the same individual divine and human attributes intelligibly and coherentlyT To use contemporary computer jargon, the question might be phrased: is it possible that God and man can he "incarnation-friendly¥" Morris believes so. Morris first of all sets out to define the terms-divine nature and human nature. He believes part of the incompatibility problem lies in attributing to Jesus's humanity unnecessarily hostile aspects. He distinguishes between being "merely human" and being "fully human"· To be " merely human " is to possess not only those properties that narrowly define one's nature or kind, such as rationality, but... (shrink)

In this article, I revisit Karl Marx’s claim in his Economic and Phil-osophic Manuscripts of 1844, that the subject in its “individual existence is at the same time a social being.” I redefine what has been translated as “social being” as “common being” in order to extrapolate an understanding of subjectivity that is a socio-ontological and collectively structured collectivity. In doing so, I demonstrate (1) that this common being is a collection of different socio-ontological traits; (2) that in order for (...) this common being to be approximated we must take into account all modes of subjectivity production that intersect in what will appear as the subject; and (3) that the Other is the constitutive parameter of the common being on which the subject depends. Finally, I revisit three exemplary modes of practice - namely critique, solidarity, and utopia - and show that conceiving of the subject as a common being renders critique constellational, solidarity overdetermined, and utopia a koinotopia. (shrink)

Introduction: The Anarchist -- The Minister: 1756-93 -- The Philosopher: 1793 -- The Activist: 1794-95 -- The Husband: 1796-99 -- The Educator: 1800-09 -- The Father:1810-19 -- The Pensioner:1819-36 -- The Legacy.

_Abstract_: After introducing general problems that a theory of subjectivity must address, the meaning of subjectivity is discussed and defined as the wholeness of first-person somato-psychological life. The most important principle in a theory of subjectivity is the entanglement of socio-subjectivity, inter-subjectivity, and intra-subjectivity. This entanglement entails that subjectivity is unique and irreplaceable, which are philosophical elements in a psychological theory. Subjectivity takes place in work, relations, and the self, and in the way that persons conduct their everyday lives in (...) particular contexts and times. Subjectivity is constituted and/or mediated through materialities, discourses, and actions, including technologies. A theory of subjectivity must include reflections on “what is” but also about “what is possible” in human somato-psychological life. Because traditional theories of subjectivity have no conceptual space for socio-subjectivity, forms of subjectivity into which subjects suture themselves are discussed. Consequences for the discipline of psychology are laid out. _Keywords_: Subjectivity; Theory; Interdisciplinarity; Society; Culture; History; Psychological Humanities _Verso una teoria della soggettività_ _Riassunto_: Comincerò illustrando le questioni generali che una teoria della soggettività deve affrontare, per discutere e definire poi il significato della soggettività come totalità della vita somato-psicologica dalla prospettiva della prima persona. Il principio più importante in una teoria della soggettività è l’intreccio tra socio-soggettività, inter-soggettività e intra-soggettività. Da questo intreccio ne viene che la soggettività è qualcosa di unico e insostituibile; questi aspetti filosofici devono caratterizzare anche una teoria psicologica della soggettività. La soggettività trova la propria concrezione nel lavoro, nelle relazioni, nel sé e nel modo in cui le persone conducono la loro vita quotidiana nei propri particolari contesti e tempi. La soggettività è costituita e/o mediata dalla materialità, dai discorsi e dalle azioni, comprese le tecnologie. Una teoria della soggettività deve considerare “ciò che è” unitamente a “ciò che è possibile” all’interno della vita somato-psicologica umana. Dal momento che le teorie tradizionali della soggettività non hanno concesso uno spazio concettuale per la socio-soggettività, in questo lavoro si discuteranno quelle forme di soggettività al cui interno i soggetti si vengono a trovare suturati. Saranno quindi illustrate le conseguenze di questi aspetti per la psicologia come ambito disciplinare. _Parole chiave_: Soggettività; Teoria; Interdisciplinarità; Società; Cultura; Storia; Psychological Humanities. (shrink)